


it's not an illusion (you're the one)

by xxcaribbean



Category: One Direction (Band), Real Person Fiction
Genre: Angst, Cheating, Language, M/M, ziam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 02:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxcaribbean/pseuds/xxcaribbean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because anger can make a man do something stupid, even if it hurts the one he loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's not an illusion (you're the one)

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr is here.](http://hazzasweet.tumblr.com) and based on [this prompt.](http://xprdc.tumblr.com/post/41584156309/hi-heres-a-prompt)

_ I hate to say this, but I get the feeling that you’re having second thoughts about us. _

Zayn meets her at the local pub.

She’s all curves and long hair, twisted neatly into curls that frame an angular face. There’s lipstick and makeup caked around her eyes that make them more calling than anyone could’ve been prepared for, and she eyes him from the other side of the room.

But he flicks his eyes downwards because he has no interest.

His body reacts differently though.

_ Would you say something? We can’t go on like this unless you talk about it, Zayn. _

He orders the hard stuff, the alcohol that burns as it slides down his throat and settles into his stomach. It pools there and makes his head foggy along with the stale smell of musk and cigarette smoke.

“Hiya, sugar.”

Zayn freezes in his seat until he feels a hand on his upper thigh. His eyes slide over until he can see her out of the corner of his vision.

He grunts, but ignores her nonetheless and downs another shot of whiskey.

“It’s not even late yet, and you’re already going to town. Somethin' bothering you?”

Her voice is much too light, and it makes him shiver.

“Isn’t that why people come here?” he counters, and he’s met with a chuckle.

“You can talk about it, if you want. I’ll listen.”

And at this, she swivels her bar stool so that her crossed legs are brushing up against the side of Zayn’s. She leans up against the bar, elbow resting on the wooden surface, her face turned towards Zayn, analyzing his every move.

“That’s not what you’re here for.”

She quirks an eyebrow up. “Really?”

“Really,” he deadpans.

_ You know? If you don’t do something, this isn’t going to be solved, and if it can’t be solved then we’re going to be in a world of trouble. _

“Well, if you seem to know what I want then are you going to do something about it?”

Zayn purses his lips but shakes his head. “No.”

She gives him a tsk. “You’ve got two options here, doll. You can drink your sorrows away and have a killer headache in the morning or you can come along with me, and I’ll make it better for you.”

Her hand slides over just the slightest bit from his thigh, and Zayn shifts in his seat, not comfortable with the way she’s moving in too close, but then she removes it quickly enough, pulls back from him until she leans in and whispers in his ear. “I’ll be here all night. You let me know if you change your mind.”

She stands up and makes her way back over to her table, and this time, she has Zayn looking although he tries desperately not to.

His anger – the main reason he’s here in the first place – grips him suddenly and before he knows it, he abandons his drink in favor of the woman who looks nothing like Liam.

x.x.x.x

When Zayn wakes up, the first thing he notices is that he’s not in a familiar room. It’s typical and cliché and he panics because where the hell is he right now?

Sitting up, he glances over to his left and realizes he’s not alone in bed; the woman from the bar has her back to him, sheets pooled down around her lower back, half exposed to Zayn.

And it all sinks in.

Zayn’s throat clinches up, his eyes wet of their own accord and before he knows what he’s doing a hand makes his way to his mouth to muffle the sob that wants to escape his throat.

He gets up from the bed, body a mess of trembles and regret and anger and hesitation and anything else that one can feel in a moment of pure betrayal.

Because that’s what this is; that’s what Zayn’s done.

He puts on his clothes; he doesn’t wake the woman up or even remember her name and instead he leaves the hotel room, not even bothering to let to door close softly behind him because god, he’s such a fucking fool, a mess of a person.

Who the fuck did he think he was to believe his feelings didn’t matter?

And Liam…

Zayn takes a moment to lean against the wall of the building he’s in. It looks like an apartment complex, but he can’t be sure.

He slides down, sits on his haunches and covers his face with his hands because the only thing he has now is shame.

Shame and the very possibility that he’ll lose Liam forever.

x.x.x.x

Zayn finds Liam on the couch when he gets home. He’s asleep, head resting on one of the pillows, and he looks like he’d cried himself to sleep after their fight.

And any other time Zayn would leave him, finding it hard to wake up his boyfriend when he looks too damn adorable, but this time Zayn makes his way over to the coffee table and sits on it, shaking Liam awake and looking at him with guilty.

“You have to leave me, Liam.”

Liam blinks up at Zayn, blearily eyed and not too sure of what’s going on until he focuses in on Zayn and sits up straight.

“Zayn, you’re back.”

“L-Liam…” he stutters his name, a sob wracking is body then, and he can’t bear to look at Liam any longer.

“What did you do?” The words sting Zayn because they are accusing in every sense of the word. There’s a fraction of emotion behind them too, but Liam’s never been good at keeping them out of the way when he speaks because it’s not that Liam’s overly emotional, he just cares too much.

_Cared_ too much for Zayn, and Zayn got scared in the beginning and took Liam for granted with his _I love you’s_ and his adoration and the need to let Zayn know he’d always be there.

Zayn starts laughing suddenly; not out of hilarity but out of the fact that he can’t believe himself, can’t believe he even had the audacity to show his face around here again.

It’s quiet, but his shoulders shake and Liam stands up, and Zayn tries to swallow them down because this is just downright stupid.

“ _Zayn_ ,” Liam’s voice goes down a notch, one that instantly sobers him. He clenches his jaw and looks up but not at Liam. He stares in front of him, at the back of the wall the couch is pushed up against.

“She was just there…”

Zayn hears the intake of breath from Liam, hears him shuffle on his feet, and when Zayn looks over at him, face blank and eyes void of any kind of emotion, he sees that Liam’s looking down at the ground, staring at his sock-covered feet with his fist clenched at his side.

“And you stayed the night with her too.”

Zayn only nods, but he rocks forward and his lip quivers and he tries to hide his face from Liam by turning it away.

“I’m sorry. That’s not enough; that won’t _ever_ be enough because you’ve been so good to me, Liam. You have, don’t doubt that now, please don’t.”

Zayn’s hand makes it to his face, covering his mouth again to keep down the noises in the back of his throat. He feels as if he could curl up in a ball right now and hide himself away for the rest of eternity.

“So that’s what this is about then?” Liam asks, but Zayn doesn’t understand. “You weren’t happy.” Liam says it with an emotion that Zayn can’t place; maybe it’s enlightenment, like all the pieces finally click together for him as to why Liam never heard those three little words come out of Zayn’s mouth. Zayn knows Liam had been waiting to hear them, never pressured him to say them back though because he couldn’t; he couldn’t do it then but now…

“What?” Zayn throws back, but he doesn’t move from his seat.

“That’s why you couldn’t talk to me about anything, why you didn’t want to tell me anything that was going on with you. I just thought you were being closed off or indifferent, like you didn’t trust me just yet but-” Liam cuts himself off, and Zayn turns back to look at him. His eyes are slightly wide, and he looks so young, so… so Liam.

“God, I’m such a _stupid_ fuck.”

Liam doesn’t correct him, and Zayn notices..

“Liam, I’m sorry,” Zayn says. He stares directly at Liam and doesn’t move his gaze until Liam looks back up at him. He needs Liam to see that he means it with everything he has in him, and he also realizes that Liam’s probably going to doubt anything he has to say right now, but he needs him to know this much. “I mean it so goddamn much, and there is no excuse, but if I had to give a reason as to why I did it, it was because of you, and how lame is that to say? To list you as a reason for _my_ fuck up, but _shit_.”

Zayn stands up then but he doesn’t move, too scared that Liam may retreat. There are tears that latch on to his eyelashes, where they clump them together and his lids feel heavy and wet. His face, no doubt, looks red and blotchy but he takes a deep breath so he won’t hiccup another sob.

“This isn’t fair of me to say in a time like this, I know that. And for whatever reason it’s taken me this long to realize it, I love you.” He shakes his head, and the tears well up again, and he can feel it becoming increasingly hard to get his mouth open to say anything else. “I love you, Liam Payne, and I was stupid for not saying it before, for not being what you wanted me to be, but I couldn’t.”

Liam has a cross look on his face, one that looks like he wants to protest and the other that wants to leave the room, get as far away from this as possible.

“I _couldn’t_ say anything because I got scared. You were suddenly in my life, and you took up so much space. You demanded attention and made me feel and everyone else before you, they’d been flings and relationships that weren’t serious, but then there you were," Zayn throws a hand forward, gesturing to Liam with a mock smile on his face, "and I didn’t know how to navigate us. You wanted more of me than I could’ve given at the time, and that wasn't your fault, but I blamed you anyway.”

Zayn wipes at his face, rubs the back of his hand against the tears to get rid of them.

“I told myself you were nosy and wanted too much, but really, I enjoyed it all. I liked that you cared; you cared about me when no one else had.” He bites at his lower lip, tries to swallow down the feeling that has him choking.

They stay silent afterwards, Zayn sniffing and waiting for Liam’s reaction. He feels like he’s in front of a judge, someone ready to condemn him to a sentence that he’ll have to carry out regardless of whether he likes the outcome or not.

But then Liam’s moving forward and wrapping his arms around Zayn and letting him burry his face into his neck, where he can smell the cleanliness and the scent that is verifiably Liam.

Zayn cowers against him though, arms pressed up against Liam’s chest as his warmth consumes him. He feels Liam’s hand on his back rubbing circles there while he lets out everything pent up within him, crying into Liam’s shoulder and whispering _sorry_ too many times to count. Zayn makes sure Liam hears him too. He presses his lips against the side of Liam’s neck as he says them so that Liam can feel Zayn mouth the words, feel his breathe and know that he means it.

“Zayn,” Liam says. His voice rumbles deep in his chest, where Zayn can feel it against his body, and all the while Zayn has been crying, he finally realizes that Liam’s been crying too.

Zany only clings tighter to Liam, afraid that he’ll pull away much too soon, but he doesn’t do that whatsoever.

“Despite what you may think right now, I love you, Zayn. Damn it all to hell, but I do.”

He sounds completely shattered, which only makes the pain in Zayn’s chest ache that much worse because now he knows he can finally say those words back.

Yet, he’d screwed that up and now this is so much more than he deserves.

“Don’t do that, Liam.” Zayn tenses in his arms and suddenly pulls away. “Please tell me you’re not okay with this.”

Liam takes Zayn’s hand in his, thumb rubbing the back of it.

“No, I’m not. What you did was horrible and it hurts, Zayn, especially when you love someone so much that you’re willing to learn to forgive them.”

Zayn just shakes his head though because he wants to object. He has the golden opportunity right in front of him to have Liam take him back, but how and why would he do that and-

“I screwed you over and you still want me?”  Zayn feels like bugs are crawling all over his skin. He shivers at the thought that Liam could do this. It isn’t right; it’s not.

“You want to know why?” Liam says. His eyes are still wet, and a few tears escape from his them. Zayn would very much like to wipe them away.

“Why?” He licks the front of his teeth out of nervousness. He’s scared, and he feels disgusting.

“Because no matter what, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t care. That doesn’t mean I should take you back, but if you didn’t have the slightest amount of feeling inside of you for me, then you wouldn’t be standing in here, in front of me, showing off exactly who I knew you were from the beginning, someone who has emotions but chooses to hide them away, and that’s not okay with me.”

Liam draws him in again by his arm despite Zayn feeling like jelly. There’s a brief moment of detachment, like Zayn can’t believe this is real, but it is.

“We’re going to work on you, Zayn, okay? I’m going to show you that you’re safe, yeah? You’re safe.”

And Zayn buries his head into Liam’s shoulder once again and hangs on dearly because Liam’s forgiveness will take time, and it will take more than that to even forgive himself, but if Zayn’s ever going to get better, he’s going to have to work on who he is, prove to Liam and to himself that he can feel and love and be vulnerable for the one person that matters most, who won’t break him like Zayn had almost done to Liam.

“I love you,” Liam says as clear as day, pulling back just the slightest bit to stare at Zayn. They’re both a little hurt, but Liam’s positive it’ll only be another little scar that will eventually heal.

“Liam,” Zayn begins, states it without any reservations and makes sure the other lad only has eyes for him. “ _I love you too_.”


End file.
